I know that you already got so many of these, but can you do a list of mangacaps that show the daily life at Wammy's House? Because I think that it was maybe too performance-oriented and mismanaged, but overall portrayed as a pretty decent environment for children to grow up in (at least in the manga from what I remember... and I know that Another Note's interpretation of Wammy's House always really bugged me, so that'd be super helpful!!)
Interesting question! I agree that Another Note made it sound darker and more abusive than it originally looked in the manga, so let’s take a look:
THE ORIGINAL MANGA VERSION OF WAMMY’S:
It was founded by Watari with his own money, and was one of many orphanages he opened around the world:
This is how Aizawa and Matsuda describe it after going to see it for themselves:
1. it’s “more of an institution than an orphanage,” and kids are definitely being purposely raised to be the next L. It doesn’t specifically say where these brilliant children come from or how they are selected, but Wammy’s is definitely not a charitable organization
2. the kids go by aliases with everyone, and are given normal schoolwork and also “very advanced” work to do (but it doesn’t sound quite as forceful and dehumanizing as the process did in the novel, where A and B were treated more like weird science experiments and “expected to fail’)
3. Roger seemed straight-forward about everything with the detectives, like he didn’t seem to think he had anything too shady to hide about the goings-on at Wammy’s
4. Roger wanted Near and Mello to work together to be the next L. Doesn’t sound too forceful about it, but again, these are kids and they’re in an institution that’s grooming them specifically to take on this role, and children are very impressionable and vulnerable people by default
5. both Mello and Near chose to leave Wammy’s on their own as orphan minors (ages 12 and 14 or something?), and apparently nobody stopped them. Pretty neglectful-sounding (if you’re looking at it from a serious/realistic perspective). Near carried on doing what the institution was raising him to do all along, and Mello ended up in the US involved in organized crime, so make of that what you will, I suppose
6. Another student Linda “excelled in art” and became a famous artist. Sounds like she was allowed to pursue creative passions and a career outside of the stuff that would directly help her become L, so that’s a plus in Wammy’s favour
Now let’s look at Wammy’s House as it appears in the manga:
7. It looks like a giant re-purposed cathedral with a gated entrance
8. the students look mostly unsupervised and also free to express themselves and do leisure activities as they please. Not rigidly controlled, nor disciplined, nor coddled much. Everyone appears to be doing fine in this scene, except maybe the kid Mello’s bullying
9. there are photographs of the children and Watari in Roger’s office, and everything looks pretty nice and well-kept inside the building
10. There’s at least one other adult there helping out, and the students seem to like her a lot
11. There’s a lot of running in the halls and rowdy horseplay going on
12. Mello’s bullying of the bowl-cut kid is stopped, but not reprimanded
13. there seems to be a certain casual familiarity between Roger and these two, like they either interact a lot or things are fairly informally run there
14. Roger is very blunt and honest about everything. He doesn’t sugarcoat the sad news for the kids at all, nor patronize them, but it seems a bit insensitive too
15. Roger seems like a very weak authority figure in general, and like he’s just carrying out orders or trying to keep the peace more than anything else
16. Mello clearly idolizes L and is very upset by the news of L’s death
17. Roger will not make L’s decision about his heir for him, and asks Near and Mello to work together. Clearly there is a ranking system in place if Near is said to be always above Mello in the scores, but apparently it’s also not set in stone and open to being fiddled with if necessary
18. This flexibility and offering of a joint title seems like too little too late in that the ranking culture appears to have already seriously messed Mello up, though; it’s hard to say how much of his competitiveness is just his own personality and how much is because of the pressure and inferiority he felt in that system, but whatever the case, it was extremely formative for him to be put into this running for L’s throne as an impressionable and powerless child
19. the other kids don’t seem too bothered about the competitive aspect of things at Wammy’s, but that might be because they were not as passionate nor close to actually winning the title as Mello was
20. Mello threatens to run away at age 14, and Roger barely does anything to stop him
21. Mello ACTUALLY runs away at age 14, and as far as we know nobody tries to stop him. Next time we see him he’s in the mafia and has done things such as decapitate people to get ahead in his career
Near apparently also leaves the orphanage at this age by choice and starts going after Kira on his own, though we don’t know much of anything about what he did during those years or how much he was helped, but we can assume he probably had a less dramatic and more stable adolescence than Mello did
SO IN CONCLUSION:
I’d say it’s still strange and neglectful and exploitive by any serious/realistic standards for healthy rearing of children, but that it doesn’t seem as horrific and rigid an environment and program in the manga as the later novel made it sound
AS A WEIRD BONUS TIDBIT:
Apparently Watari had a family who didn’t know that he was Watari at all? Lmao
Mello&Halle anon here. Yass. I also think she was the one who helped him since next time we see him after the explosion it's at her house isn't it? (maybe I'm wrong)but. Imagine the healing process. Halle leaving headquarters & going home to Mello in the sofa/bath being all snarky and she's having none of it & when he's better they get along really well and have coffe at her kitchen & talk about a lot of things. Hooking up is just a bonus when Mello gets tired for the sofa. Its so great.
Agreed, they could have such a weird dynamic and it could be a really interesting side of both of them to exploreAnd yes, it’s a little ambiguous in the manga about how exactly she helped him post-explosion, but it was definitely Halle who did:
The official manga timeline says that Mello blew up the base on November 11th:
and then had this confrontation with Halle in her apartment on November 19th, just one week later (a little unrealistic to think his burns healed up that fast but ok lol):
I think there’s so much interesting stuff that could be done with these two characters. I haven’t ever looked for it but I hope that some fic for it exists
I wonder how DN would have changed if Near and Mello really were L's children... I guess their ages would have to be adjusted and who knows if Near and Mello would still live at Wammy's House ( and oh god imagine the daddy issues and sibling rivalry 😂) Also, who would the mother be? How old would L have been when they were born? Were they planned or an accident? Depending on the infos we'd be given, I think the fandom would have gone crazy with the theories/discourse. Thank god we were spared..
Yeah, they’d definitely have to be younger than they were in canon if they were his sons, because L was only 25 when he died! And Near and Mello were like 12 -14 years old or so before the time skip or something, so I’d say they’d probably have to be bumped to about 5 years old or younger if they were L’s kids. It’s pretty funny to imagine Light being taken down by a couple of 10 year old twin L babies after the time skip, in that case!
I have a feeling Ohba would probably never explain who the mother was, but I have no idea how the Wammy’s thing would work if they were his sons. I guess it really would change the whole story a lot. It would possibly be a cool AU to explore the whole “sons instead of successors” thing in a fanfic, but yeah, I’m kinda glad they weren’t his biological kids and that L was just another one of the Wammy’s students. I like that his legacy was passed on by skill and personality traits rather than just inherited or whatever. And I do love my Wammy’s orphanage/school lore so much!
